War Eagle Class
Perhaps the most infamous Romulan warship of the Organian Conflict, the War Eagle redefined Capital Ship design when she was introduced in 2286. Considerably larger and much more powerful than any design in existence in the Federation or the Klingon Empire at the time, she sparked an arms race and ushered in the age of the "Super-Battleship. Since outpaced due to the very technological acceleration she started, she remains in service as a powerful Dreadnought, although she lacks the Electronic Warfare Equipment usually carried by such types. Development In 2267, whilst KR Series vessels imported from the Klingon Empire were useful additions to the Romulan Star Navy, there was concern in the Senate that the Star Empire was becoming dependent on Klingon military materiel and neglecting the development of native technology as a result. A new technological programme was launched to provide new, entirely Romulan warships for the RSN. This design programme became known as the Ornith Series, and one of the first designs to be approved was that of a Frigate. This late 2260s design had a number of flaws however, namely that she still relied on fusion power, and lacked any weapon more formidable than the increasingly obsolescent Cohesive Fused Deuterium Irradiation Cannon. Production of the new design was put on hold until a number of concurrent programmes in the fields of weaponry and propulsion could bear fruit. In 2275 Romulan engineers produced a working, reliable M/AM powered warp drive. Priority was given initially to refitting the Cricket Class Destroyer, resulting in the War Bird Class of 2278. Once this programme neared completion, all effort ways turned to introducing new, powerful, M/AM powered designs. The first of these designs was a revived and updated version of the 2269 Frigate design. An unexpected side effect of M/AM research was that the technology designed for plasma flow to warp nacelles could also be employed to refine and perfect a lighter, less power hungry version of the Plasma Torpedo. Previously, plasma flow had been too inefficient to make a reduced power version viable, but now a torpedo with approximately 1/3rd the yield and power requirements of the standard Plasma Torpedo and capable of being charged in just over half the time. Whilst less efficient overall than the existing Plasma Torpedo, this new Light Plasma Torpedo did allow a weapon of significant power to be fitted to smaller and lighter vessels. In this role, the new Type L Plasma Torpedo Tube came to replace the old CFDIC as the weapon of choice on light Romulan designs. The Gladius Class Frigate entered service shortly after, albeit with a single Type L Plasma Torpedo Tube and a CFDIC as a back-up weapon. Limited peace-time weapons range experience proved the Light Plasma Torpedo was a reliable and efficient weapon. Using a scaled up Gladius Class hull, and designed with a pair of Type L Plasma Torpedo Tubes as her main offensive weapons, a design for a new Light Cruiser took shape, soon named the Legion Class. The Legion was designed to complement a larger, Battlecruiser-sized design that became known as the Garuda Class. Again using a scaled up Gladius Class hull planform, the Garuda was essentially a much larger "Bird of Prey", much like the older Capsize Class. She was built around a single Type H Plasma Torpedo Tube, the same as the lighter War Bird Class, but she was intended to carry a much heavier Primary Weapons array along with considerably stronger shields and hull armour. The Garuda entered service in 2282, just in time to serve in the 4th Gorn-Romulan War. Immediately though, combat experience showed there were considerable problems with her design. The single Type H Plasma Torpedo Tube simply wasn't heavy enough armament for a Battlecruiser. Whilst her primary array of five Disruptor Cannons was formidable, extended use of these weapons was counter to the Alpha Strike, hit and fade tactics employed by the Romulan Star Navy, and she simply didn't have the shield strength or armour to slug it out with heavy Gorn warships. Production was halted, and the few ships in service used as command ships and kept away from heavy combat. The whole debacle left the RSN with an embarrassing problem. The largest and most powerful ships under their command were of Klingon origin; Romulan Capital Ships of a similar size were hopelessly out of date, and although the 4th Gorn-Romulan War had been a stalemate and white peace, the Star Navy was starting to look increasingly obsolete. War was coming, and the RSN desperately needed Capital Ships. In the short term, additional Condor Class Battleships helped to "plug the gap", but they were of Klingon design and not especially suited to Romulan battle tactics. Romulan warship designers had been toying with conceptual designs for a very large Bird of Prey type vessel since the 2250s, always finding that the lack of an efficient power source was the undoing of such a design. The adoption of M/AM Power in the 2270s finally gave these designs the power they needed. In such a large design, a huge M/AM reactor could be mounted, which would also solve the usual problem of insufficient power reserves for powerful Plasma Torpedo weaponry. As the design evolved, eventually three Plasma Torpedo Tubes became the preferred Secondary Weapons Array, with two mounted low down in the cavernous hull, and a third in the centre of a large prow just beneath the main bridge. The size of the design allowed her designers to simply scale everything up, with two warp nacelles of unprecedented size being connected to the main hull by an upper and lower wing, with a single massive impulse deck at the rear of the central hull. Surprisingly, the prototype was constructed and tested with little teething troubles, the ample space inside the ship lending itself to repairs whilst underway. The Organian Conflict had already begun, although the Star Empire managed to avoid being dragged in from the outset. Production of the first 3 vessels was completed in record time, and these mighty warships were to be the spearhead of the first Romulan offensive. Operational History The "Day of the Eagle" in 2286 marked the surprise entry of the Romulan Star Empire into the Organian Conflict. The War Eagle Class was the flagship of this invasion, with two leading the invasion into Federation space and the third stationed ready to deal with any Gorn counter-attacks. They proved enormously successful, being more powerful than anything Starfleet could muster against them. Whilst the RSE War Eagle herself was eventually overcome by a massed attack by Starfleet Destroyers and took heavy damage, she survived to limp back to Romulan space and proved that the design could take a punch as well as deal one. During her repairs, the War Eagle was outfit with a new weapon, the Extremely High Frequency Radiation Cannon (EHFRC). Based on the earlier CFDIC, these weapon was designed as a siege gun to target occupied worlds and to quickly kill the defenders (or civilian population, Romulan doctrine did not specify a distinction). The Star Empire intended to seize resource rich worlds along the Romulan-Federation Neutral Zone and such a weapon was vital to capture such worlds quickly and efficiently. The radiation involved had an extremely short half-life, allowing quick occupation of a world that had been "cleansed" in such a manner. These guns were deployed on all War Eagle Class warships as they returned for repair and replenishment, and were used successfully to occupy several small mining outposts. Fortunately, the Star Empire never had opportunity to turn them against a heavily occupied world. The War Eagle had 9 months of virtually unopposed dominance before Klingon and later Federation designs began to close the gap. She still proved a powerful asset however, and construction of new ships continued as long as time and resources allowed. During the War of Pacification, the War Eagle was one of the few ships able to stand against ISC Dreadnoughts, and a single War Eagle was reportedly part of a fleet sent to aid Melkor during the Ormong of 2291. By the outbreak of the General War in 2292, a successor to the War Eagle was entering service. The even more formidable Imperial Hawk Class Battleship lead to the War Eagle being reclassified as a Dreadnought, although she remained more powerful than most other starships she would encounter. Apocrypha After her involvement in the Praxis Incident of 2293 was revealed, the Romulan Star Empire began to once again withdraw behind her borders, withdrawing from galactic affairs again all together in the aftermath of the Tomed Incident in 2311. Even before this time, Romulan tactics had begun to turn away from fleet engagements and back to single "lone wolf" warships, now of a gargantuan size dwarfing the Crickets and Capsize Classes of old. Although the new Imperial Hawk Class Battleship had proven to be an extremely powerful fleet asset, she was less capable at long distance cruises than the War Eagle. Further more, experiments conducted in the field of alternative power sources had lead to the development of Artificial Quantum Singularities, and the cavernous hull and double winged design of the War Eagle leant itself to experiments with this form of power. Although only experimentally fitted with AQS Power, the War Eagle lead on to the Melak Class "Warbird", made infamous by the Tomed Incident and later the Battle of Narendra III. The War Eagle herself continued in service with M/AM power until the 2320s, when sufficient Melak Class Warbirds had entered service to replace her. In one final historical footnote, the Extremely High Frequency Radiation Cannon mounted on the War Eagle was outlawed under the terms of the Treaty of Algeron, by which time the radiation involved in her operation had been named by Romulan and Federation scientists as Thalaron Radiation. Specifications * Class: 'Dreadnought * 'Hull Type Designation: '''RDN * '''Length: 590m * Crew: 570 * Warp Nacelles: '''2 * '''Maximum Sublight Speed: 2625 k/s (26.25 Mk/s) * Cruise Warp Factor Speed: wf 7.1 * Safe Maximum Warp Factor Speed: wf 8.4 * Hull Rating: '700 HSF * 'Shield Rating: 780 FSP * Sensor Rating: 1000 SRU * Armament and Equipment: ** Primary *** 5 × Disruptor Cannon ** Secondary *** 3 × Type H Plasma Torpedo Tube ** Heavy *** None ** Advanced *** 1 × Extremely High Frequency Radiation Cannon (EHFRC) ** Equipment *** Tractor Beam Emitter *** Romulan-Type Cloaking Device *** Tal Shiar Transporter Pad *** Probes Ships in Service (2292) RSE War Eagle RSE Imperator Rex RSE Pax Romvlvs RSE Pax Remvs RSE Pax Romii RSE Glacialis RSE Amvnivs RSE Famiclivs RSE Silcvs RSE Cosecvla RSE Mivlvs RSE Avlles RSE Galactinvs RSE Allolvs RSE Savleivs Category:Romulan Vessels Category:Dreadnoughts